Genre challenge by exeterlinden

[exeterlinden.livejournal.com]

Title: You Are Free
Author: exeterlinden 
Pairing: Victoria/OMC, Victoria/Fraser
Warnings: Dark themes
Word count: 850
Genre: Poem
Author's notes: This is actually a companion piece to an AU story I wrote a while back (link goes to AO3). Here be werewolves... Thank you to my betas, luzula  and andeincascade ! :)

Summary: "...It ended... badly. She had a darkness inside her..."- Fraser, in You Must Remember This

( You Are Free )

Genre Challenge: "The Mountie and the Skogsrå" by Luzula

[luzula]

Title: The Mountie and the Skogsrå
Pairing: Fraser/Victoria
Rating: PG-13
Length: 21 verses
Genre: Traditional folk ballad
Notes: The Fraser/Victoria story seemed very suited to the folk ballad format, but I had a hard time finding an appropriate ballad at first. Among the Scandinavian folk ballads, there are many ballads on the theme of a supernatural female creature (for example a fairy, a troll or a sea creature) courting a human man (by means of spells, gifts, persuasion, or threats). It usually ends badly. This theme doesn't seem nearly as common in English ballads. Among the Child ballads, there's Allison Gross, which has a witch courting a man, but the emphasis is on the ugliness of the witch, and there's also Tam Lin, but that story has other themes as well. So I went with the Swedish medieval ballad Herr Olof och Havsfrun. Obviously it's hard to capture the style of a Scandinavian ballad in English--for example, there are set phrases that don't translate well. But the meter should be the same (with rhymes and some alliteration), and I also tried to capture the formal back-and-forth style of conversation. The "skogsrå" of the title is a female supernatural creature which looks like a beautiful woman, but is treacherous and has a hollow back (thus the line "Her back was hollow, her heart was black").

Also, you can download a recording of me singing the ballad here. I'm quite fond of the melody--it has an A part in a minor key and a B part in a major key. It's a dancing tune called a "schottis". If you're curious about the original lyrics, there's a version here where someone has helpfully subtitled it in English.

I'd like to thank exeterlinden and 2corbies for helpful betas!


( Read more... )